A judge’s verbal slip referring to the accused man wasn’t enough to bias the jury, the appeal court rules.

A Toronto man has lost his appeal of a cocaine trafficking conviction in which he argued a judge may have biased the jury by calling him “Mr. Guilty.”

While explaining the concept of reasonable doubt to the jury in Prinze Wilson’s 2011 trial, Ontario Superior Court Justice Faye McWatt instructed them on the presumption of innocence.

“It is only defeated if and when Crown counsel satisfied you, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Mr. Guilty, I’m sorry, Mr. Wilson, is guilty of the crime charged,” she said.

Wilson’s lawyers argued in the Court of Appeal for Ontario that there was a “powerful risk” the jury would think the comment indicated the judge’s personal view.

But nothing was said about the judge’s “obvious slip of the tongue” in 2011 until after Wilson was convicted and the defence asked for a mistrial based on the judge’s alleged appearance of bias, three appeal court judges said in a written ruling, released Monday.

The appeal judges said the jurors, as “reasonable, intelligent people, would take the comment for what it clearly was — an inadvertent misstatement quickly corrected, probably before it was even noticed.”

To suggest otherwise is “to assume a degree of irresponsibility and irrationality incompatible with the important function of the jury,” wrote Justices David Doherty, Paul Rouleau and Gloria Epstein.

Wilson was arrested in a stairwell of his apartment complex with 22 packages of crack cocaine, each weighing 8 grams, in his hands. He testified he was only there to buy crack and that, when police arrived, the true dealer, Shane Whiting, had thrown the drugs down the stairs and fled. In the confusion, Wilson said he picked up the discarded drugs and was immediately arrested.

Reached for comment Monday, Wilson, 27, said he is discussing with his lawyers whether to try to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Wilson said the Ontario appeal court apparently ruled a judge can defame a defendant in any way, “as long as she says sorry.”

The married father of a 2-year-old girl said he has not been able to find work since being convicted, which led to the loss of his security clearance as a firefighter with Ontario Power Generation.